Best U.S. Open Courses Give Players a Lift, and Vice Versa

For more than a century, the United States Golf Association has staged its main Open championship on treacherously traditional courses across America, but this week it is in uncharted territory: links-like Chambers Bay on a sandy shore of Puget Sound near Tacoma, Wash.

With the 115th Open the first in the Pacific Northwest, it’s as if Chambers Bay is auditioning. Will it be worthy of joining Oakmont, Winged Foot, Pebble Beach and others in the Open rotation? Or will it be a one-time novelty?

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Jack Nicklaus on the way to winning the 1962 Open at Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania.Credit...Associated Press

The identity of the winner could provide the answer. Just as names make news in journalism, names make the reputation of a golf course. The best Open courses invariably elevate the best golfers onto the leaderboard, if not to the trophy ceremony. Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan and Bobby Jones, the best golfers of their eras, share the Open record with four victories. Tiger Woods, a sure Hall of Famer in his era, has won three.

In determining the quality of Open courses, one method is to look for winners who have multiple Open titles and have been enshrined in the World Golf Hall of Fame.

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Bobby Jones won the 1929 Open at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y.Credit...Associated Press

OAKMONT COUNTRY CLUBOakmont, Pa. According to the best-golfers formula, Oakmont emerges as the best of the best. There have been eight Opens since 1927 on the slick greens and deep bunkers in the rolling hills outside Pittsburgh, and seven winners there earned a total of 14 Open titles: Nicklaus and Hogan (four each), Ernie Els (two), Johnny Miller, Larry Nelson, Tommy Armour and Ángel Cabrera. All are in the Hall of Fame except Cabrera, the 2007 winner, but with the 2009 Masters title also on his résumé, he will probably join them.

Oakmont’s only surprising winner, the exception that proves the rule, was Sam Parks Jr., a 25-year-old pro at the nearby South Hills course who stopped by Oakmont to practice for a month before the 1935 Open. With a final-round 76 for a 72-hole score of 299, 11 over par, he was two strokes ahead of the long-hitting Jimmy Thomson and three ahead of Walter Hagen, a two-time Open champion.

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Tom Watson hitting out of the rough at Pebble Beach Golf Links in the 1982 Open, which he went on to win.Credit...Associated Press

Aside from the removal of some 170 bunkers from its original 350, and a slight move of the eighth green to allow the Pennsylvania Turnpike to split the course in 1949, Oakmont is virtually unchanged from the layout that the steel baron Henry Fownes founded in 1903. In 1987 it became the first golf course in the United States to be declared a national historic landmark.

WINGED FOOT GOLF CLUBMamaroneck, N.Y. Winged Foot, where the greens supposedly break toward the New York skyline, was baptized as an Open course in 1929 by Jones. He won a 36-hole playoff with the little-known Al Espinosa by 23 strokes. Billy Casper won his first career Open at Winged Foot in 1959 and won his second at Olympic in a 1966 playoff with Arnold Palmer. Hale Irwin won at Winged Foot in 1974 and later added two more Open titles to his Hall of Fame credentials. Fuzzy Zoeller routed Greg Norman in a 1984 playoff at Winged Foot. In 2006, the last time Winged Foot hosted the Open, Phil Mickelson was leading at the final hole but sliced his tee shot off a hospitality tent, leading to a double bogey and a victory for Geoff Ogilvy.

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Ben Hogan won the 1950 Open at Merion Golf Club outside Philadelphia, 16 months after he had been in a near-fatal car crash.Credit...Associated Press

PEBBLE BEACH GOLF LINKSPebble Beach, Calif. On the cliffs above Carmel Bay in Northern California, Pebble Beach didn’t join the Open rotation until 1972, but its winners enriched its scenery. Nicklaus won that year. Tom Watson’s pitch from the rough for a birdie 2 on the 71st hole edged Nicklaus in 1982. Tom Kite, another Hall of Famer, won in 1992, and Woods shattered a record in 2000, winning by 15 strokes. Graeme McDowell won his first major there in 2010.

MERION GOLF CLUB Ardmore, Pa. On the leafy Main Line near Philadelphia, Merion has produced three Hall of Fame winners: Hogan in 1950, 16 months after his near-fatal highway crash; Lee Trevino, in a playoff with Nicklaus, in 1971; and David Graham in 1981. After a 32-year absence from the rotation, Merion hosted the 2013 Open, with Justin Rose holding off Mickelson.

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Tiger Woods after winning the 2002 Open at Bethpage Black Course on Long Island, his fourth consecutive major victory.Credit...Vincent Laforet/The New York Times

SHINNECOCK HILLS GOLF CLUBSouthampton, N.Y. When Shinnecock Hills, in the Hamptons, joined the rotation in 1986, Raymond Floyd validated it with the last of four major titles in his Hall of Fame portfolio. Retief Goosen added to his Hall of Fame hopes there by winning his second Open in 2004. Shinnecock Hills will host the 2018 Open.

PINEHURST NO. 2Pinehurst, N.C. Pinehurst No. 2, in the North Carolina pinelands, was inserted into the rotation in 1999, when Payne Stewart nipped Mickelson. Stewart died four months later in a jet crash. Martin Kaymer, another Hall of Fame candidate, dominated the field at Pinehurst last year, winning by eight strokes.

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Raymond Floyd at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island after winning the 1986 Open.Credit...David Cannon/Getty Images

BETHPAGE BLACK COURSEFarmingdale, N.Y. Bethpage Black, a refurbished public course on Long Island, made its debut in 2002 with a Woods victory. It was the last time a golfer won the Masters and the United States Open in the same year. In the 2009 Open at Bethpage, Mickelson was again in contention during the final round, but he was the runner-up to the journeyman Lucas Glover.

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Some formidable Open courses have fallen out of the rotation. Baltusrol, in the northern New Jersey suburbs, where Nicklaus won in 1967 and 1980, was sidetracked to the P.G.A. Championship, which Mickelson, already a Hall of Famer, won there in 2005. The P.G.A. will be there again next year.

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Pinehurst Resort and Golf Club in North Carolina joined the rotation of top Open sites when Payne Stewart won there in 1999.Credit...Tom Able Green/Getty Images

Before hosting the P.G.A. twice, Oak Hill, outside Rochester, had three Opens, each won by a Hall of Famer: Cary Middlecoff in 1956, Trevino in 1968 and Curtis Strange in 1989.

Oakland Hills, near Detroit, had three Hall of Fame winners: Ralph Guldahl in 1937, Hogan in 1951 and Gene Littler in 1961. It has not hosted an Open since 1996, though Padraig Harrington won the P.G.A. there in 2008.

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The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., had its first prominent winner in 1913 when Francis Ouimet, center, defeated the British stars Harry Vardon, left, and Ted Ray.Credit...Associated Press

The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., also had three Opens, each won by a Hall of Famer. Francis Ouimet, who lived across the street from the 17th tee, was 20 when he stunned the British icons Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in their historic 1913 playoff. Julius Boros won a playoff with Palmer and Jacky Cupit in 1963, and Strange won a playoff with Nick Faldo in 1988.

Congressional, outside the nation’s capital, was the Open site for two Hall of Famers, Ken Venturi in 1964 and Els in 1997. When it returned as an Open host in 2011, Rory McIlroy breezed to an eight-stroke victory for the first of his four major titles.

A victory this weekend by McIlroy, now ranked No. 1, would most likely validate Chambers Bay’s future.

In 2017, the U.S.G.A. will audition another new course, Erin Hills, not far from Milwaukee. But next year, the Open will be at its old reliable, Oakmont, where the best golfers rise to the top.